CONGLOMERATE is a collaborative Gesamtkunstwerk presented in the form of a television network.
The project is realized by a core team of five artists and filmmakers:
Sol Calero, Ethan Hayes-Chute, Derek Howard, Christopher Kline and Dafna Maimon.
CONGLOMERATE acts as a producer of original programs, also inviting additional Berlin-based and international artists to realize their own segments, sets, commercials and specials for the network. Mixing diverse content ranging from melodrama, documentary, comedy, interview, music, and art into a unified body, new 30-minute Blocks composed of recurring shows and one-off segments are broadcast on the web, with new Blocks and Specials released throughout the year. All content is exclusively found here on www.conglomerate.tv

In five acts, from the fall into the early spring, Stroom Den Haag’s exhibition space will gradually shift in both shape and perspective. In three successive solo exhibitions Max de Waard, Monira Al Qadiri and Jean Katambayi Mukendi present proposals that breathe new life into the way we think about our ever-changing world. They will be our guides in a re-evaluation of the durability and logic of our basic truths and assumptions. All three artists appropriate alternative worldviews built on fiction, manipulate scientific theories, or propose alternative futures, rooted in a rewritten history.

The work of Max de Waard, Monira Al Qadiri en Jean Katambayi Mukendi offers an impetus for a refreshing recap of the themes of Attempts to Read the World (Differently), a long-running program through which Stroom and various artists look at today's world in a searching and intuitive way. A world in which multiple realities circulate and profound changes are increasingly difficult to grasp. Are our prevailing assumptions still valid when understanding these new realities? What alternatives are there to read the world differently? The three artists use selective forms of fiction in order to rearrange reality.

Max de Waard, Monira Al Qadiri and Jean Katambayi Mukendi will not only present individual, personal interactions with the changing world, but will also acknowledge the work of the others. During the weeks when one presentation transforms into the next one, the exhibition space is open to the public. This exhibition in five acts – three solo exhibitions and two transformation periods – will present a variety of artistic perspectives. Visitors should see it as a kind of “exhibition mini-series”, where the audience is invited to witness both the installation and the dismantling of an exhibition and the doubts and experiments that accompany this process.

Since his graduation from the KABK (Royal Academy of Art The Hague) in 2015 Max de Waard (Netherlands, 1992) has dedicated himself to the creation of digital universes. His raw materials and subject are the images, social codes and subcultures of the Deep Web, the Wild West of the Internet that is not indexed by standard search engines. A central theme in his work is the multitude of ways in which man tries to nourish his soul and spirituality, in order to survive in a society in which our constant online presence has become almost invisible. For his exhibition at Stroom De Waard will create new video installations about the multifaceted views of reality.

Monira Al Qadiri (Senegal, 1983) uses fiction and imagination to present alternatives for the dominance of the Western perception of time, visual culture and ways of thinking. Al Qadiri is from Kuwait, grew up in Senegal, received a Ph.D. in Inter Media Art in Japan and is currently studying at the Rijksacademie in Amsterdam. Her films, installations and sculptures explore the relationship between religious and social identity, conventional gender roles and the politics of images. The drilling for oil, symbolic for the renewed - yet already again changing - future of the Middle East, takes center stage in Al Qadiri's most recent works. From a central cog in the workings of the economy she changes oil into a critical though fabulous metaphor for current developments, rewriting both the future and the history of the region. Al Qadiri is a member of the “Gulf Futurist” artist collective GCC and has solo and group exhibitions and film screenings all over the world.

The work of Jean Katambayi Mukendi (DR Congo, 1974) is about art, science and utopia. In drawings, installations, collages and spatial interventions he plays with the established forms of representation, language and image. His work is characterized by his fascination with technology, mechanics, geometry and centres on artistic proposals to alter these formal systems. Electricity is a crucial and returning element in his work and is used as a philosophical, technical and political metaphor for the challenges of the African continent. Katambayi Mukendi does not provide objective answers for the complexity of the world, but instead creates temporary, poetic and playful allusions. In preparation for his exhibition at Stroom, he will come to The Hague in order to make new work.

The exhibition Attempts to Read the World (Differently). Three Exhibitions in Five Acts is made possible in part by the Mondriaan Fund and the City of The Hague.

Stroom Den Haag is an art center with a wide range of activities. The program of Stroom is based on the conviction that art offers a valuable contribution to novel concepts and debates about the city, culture and society.

Note for the editor:
You are cordially invited to attend the openings. For more information and high res images or if you want to interview one of the artists, please contact Hildegard Beijersbergen-Blom, pers@stroom.nl, tel. +31 (0)70-3658985.